Almost there!
Mood:  don't ask

Writing to you from Shaoguan, about a 5/6 day ride from Hong Kong. Wuhan was a great stop. Made some great friends there and they really helped me out. Stayed in a nice hostel for a few days and spent the last couple of nights upstairs in Jacky's coffee shop. They took me all around Wuhan and hit up some nice blues bars, coffee shops and a restaurant ran by a big happy Belgium who came there to work and decided to stay.

Left Wuhan with the new visa and went about 2 days making poor progress since the heat and humidity here is atrocious. Had to visit a doctor in Wuhan to fight a heat induced skin rash that was getting out of control and spreading all over. The doc got me healing up ok but the strong astringents used to to dry out the skin was just making my skin crawl and itch in the hot wet air. Wearing a headband and keeping a towel on the bars to constantly wipe the brow and face and of course the legs were feeling empty. All along through this journey my strategy was to never think about the total distance, just how far must I go today. It's worked quite well until now. I'm just too close to Hong Kong to think of anything else.

So in Xianning I got on a train to Shaoguan. I reasoned that I was gaining back the week I lost in Wuhan waiting for the visa but I know what the truth is: I just want to go home. From here I can take some smaller roads into HK, avoid Guangzhou, a huge metropolis that would take me a day to get around anyway and still feel like I'm finishing with a good ride. At this point I feel it's all behind me and the rest is just a victory lap. I've seen so much of China, all I can say to anyone is you have to visit this place. The culture, people, politics, past and future history, China is the most fascinating place I've ever seen.

Looks like a hurricane is landing south of Hong Kong from what I can gather from the Chinese news, which I don't understand, just look at the pictures! It means rain and overcast for the next few days and it's raining right now here. As long as it's not so damn hot and sweaty I welcome it. Hey cousin Shon I hear from sis you're following along, drop me a email, it would be great to hear from you! To everyone thanks for keeping up with the journey, next blog will be from the finish line.  take care and be cool.    Brian